1384 Como Blvd E, Saint Paul, MN 55117

Description

A lot of houses on Como Lake are content to just have the view. This one carries that summer-at-the-lake energy inside and keeps it going all year.
This 1938 brick Colonial Revival faces Como Lake and kept everything worth keeping: hand-ribboned plaster crown, coved ceilings, arched doorways, oak floors, and the kind of wide oak trim nobody mills anymore. The current owners brought the color and the fun. Bold wallpaper, playful lighting, and a cabin room straight out of a Minnesota childhood give the house a spirit that feels both fresh and familiar, like the lake across the street, where the path, the pavilion, and the park make this corner of Como its own small town. Four bedrooms, four baths, nearly 3,000 finished square feet, and a two-car attached garage, which in Minnesota is less a feature than a love language.

The living room sets the tone: a gas fireplace in its original tile surround, a bay window aimed at the lake, and room for the sofa you actually want. Arches carry you into the formal dining room, where the rope-trimmed plaster crown, a little arched niche, and a gold and crystal chandelier make every weeknight dinner feel like an occasion. Big windows bring in the trees, the kitchen sits right through the oak-trimmed doorway, and the room is wide enough for the long table you’ve been saving the holidays for. Keep going and you land in a sunroom with windows on three sides, the best seat in the house come February. The kitchen has a two-tier island, gas cooktop, and Miele dishwasher, but the breakfast nook steals the scene: geometric wallpaper, a built-in banquette, a tiered chandelier, and a window full of backyard. Powder room in penny tile with the sweetest vintage wall paper.

Upstairs is where the story turns. In 2011, Otogawa-Anschel Design+Build reimagined the primary suite as if it were the reason for the house. Walnut built-ins. A live-edge granite vanity. A river-stone path that winds across the bath floor to a walk-in shower, so every morning starts like a walk along the shore. Next door, the wellness room (19 x 18) holds a vaulted reading lounge, an exposed-brick exercise space, and French doors to a covered balcony where the lake handles the sunsets. Two more bedrooms on this level: one in knotty pine under a parquet ceiling, one opening to a screened porch over the gardens. The hall bath keeps its 1938 cream and black tile, because some things you leave alone.

Then there’s downstairs. Every Minnesotan knows the Friday crawl up 35 to get to the cabin. Here, the cabin is one flight down. Log walls, a plank ceiling, built-in shelves, a walk-in closet, and a 3/4 bath steps away. Next to it, a knotty pine family room with a stone corner fireplace, built for game nights and long winters. Laundry, storage, and reverse osmosis water cover the practical side.

Out back, a herringbone brick patio sits inside a garden someone tended for decades: dozens of hosta and daylily varieties, a vegetable plot, a shed, and a lot that runs 171 feet deep. June evenings were made for this.

The expensive things are handled. Full tear-off roof and solar skylights in 2022. Furnace and central air in 2016. Tankless water heater, upgraded attic insulation, radon mitigation, drain tile, and sump all in place.

Across the boulevard, the Como Lake path loops past the pavilion, with the Como Zoo and the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory around the lake. Skating in January, paddleboats in July, and a front-row seat to all of it.